It was only two weeks ago that we remembered the birthday of Stalin which was purposely placed on the day of the winter solstice, as well as the cult of Stalin growing throughout Russia. And just now we came across a new, breathtaking relic of the cult. A Stalin wall calendar, with a portrait and a short biographic chapter for each month of the year.

“The calendar is a great gift for veterans and lovers of history”, announces the publisher’s website. So if you feel like loving history, hurry, because time is growing short, and the stock is running out.

And who is the publisher? You will not find it out in a thousand years, so I tell you. The Patriarchy Publishing Centre of the Russian Orthodox Church working in one of the holiest places of the Russian church, the Trinity Monastery of St. Sergius.

But why should we wonder at this? The Russian state and church leadership works closely together and support each other. The guiding principle of the state ideology is increasingly the nostalgia for Stalin. The third element of the equation comes logically from this. Recently, even the canonization of Stalin has been proposed.

And why should we wonder at this, when in Stalin’s times the officially licensed Orthodox Church Calendar already included the progressive holidays? Did you know, for example, that exactly today, on 9 January we celebrate the feast of “the leader of the proletariat, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin”? Praise unto him.